


Where The Sidewalk Ends

by yellow_caballero



Series: Scott's Life is Hard [4]
Category: Fantastic Four, X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men Evolution
Genre: Dimensional Hijinks, Franklin Richards Needs to Stop, Gen, Gratuitous Buddhist Philosophy, Mind Screw, Ruth Aldine is Not Having a Great Day, The Future Should Go Back To Existing, Theseus' Ship Paradox, Time Shenanigans, Twilight Zone - Freeform, this fic is about eight year olds playing with toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-04 00:16:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12759192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellow_caballero/pseuds/yellow_caballero
Summary: Ruth and Franklin play with atoms.





	Where The Sidewalk Ends

Ruth dreamed about Franklin before she met him.

She had been walking through the Children’s Science Museum exhibit that Ororo had taken her to. It was superior to the Natural Science Museum because that one barely let you touch anything, and both were superior to the Met because the Met most definitely didn’t let you touch anything. Ruth didn’t actually need to touch things, she just liked to. It had all these exhibits on science and math, like how water is put in your houses and where gas comes from. It even talked about something called an atom, and how they made up everything even though they were invisible.

Ruth had laughed. Amateurs.

The atom exhibit had a big box you could put your hands in so you could feel the atoms bounce around with little air currents set in the walls. Of course they weren’t real atoms, but Ruth decided not to spoil it for the rest of them. Ororo, who loved spoiling things for everyone else, waved a hand and made the little propelling air currents go crazy and freak everyone out. Wherever Ororo walked, chaos reigned. It also had three big tubes you could press to see how they moved around in different states of matter, which Ororo had also ‘improved’.

In the dream Ruth had stuck her hands in the big atom pit and was feeling them move around when another boy walked up to her.

“Hi,” he said, “I’m Franklin.”

“I’m very busy,” Ruth said, then went back to ignoring him for the balls. She waved her hands harder so they moved more. This was awesome.

Franklin looked hurt. Too bad, Franklin. “I wanted to play with the atoms too.”

Ruth was torn and resentful. She knew that this was a public area, despite it being a dream, and that Ororo and Scott would make her share even if she didn’t want to. “Fine,” she said, forced to acquiesce to his horrible whims, “come feel this one.”

Thankfully, Franklin was just as impressed with them as she was, which made her like him more.  He plunged his hands in with her and helped her move them around, chattering excitedly about how cool they were.

“Atoms are what we’re made out of,” Ruth said, deigning to share her infinite wisdom with the uncultured. “And they move around differently based on if we’re solid and liquid and stuff. Liquids fill their containers.”

“I can make atoms too, you know!” Franklin’s eyes were shining. He gave one a bigger push and it floated around to Ruth’s side, bumping against her own.

“No you can’t.” The guy in the video had said so. “Atoms can’t be made or unmade.” They were a lot like time that way, although Ruth had a shaky grasp on the concept of time. It was happening all the - well, all the time, wasn’t it?

“Here,” he said, “I’ll prove it!”

Franklin then proceeded to make an atom. The dream blew up.

 

Ruth woke up screaming, thrashing around in her covers and pushing all of her innumerable stuffed animals off the bed. She gasped, sucking in giant lungfuls of air, trying to stop breathing so hard she only made herself breathe harder. It wasn’t a very loud scream, as Ruth wasn’t naturally a very loud person, and nobody would probably notice that she was so upset. She wanted Logan there, but he wasn’t home right now. She reached over and smacked her alarm clock, making it say that it was three am. Wow. Ruth had never been up until three am before. That was way too early. Ruth went back to sleep.

The next morning she had practiced seeing the future with Xi’an by playing a card game while everyone else was fighting robots in the Danger Room. Ruth was a monster at poker. Xi’an was trying hard to see what Ruth was seeing now and what Ruth was seeing in the future, while Ruth was trying really hard to both see what Xi’an was going to draw very soon and not let Xi’an see what she was seeing. It made her brain hurt but it was really fun, even if it was harder than usual today after the weird dream. After an hour the room beeped cheerfully and let the door slide open, dumping a very sweaty and very complainey mass of teenagers outside to stumble towards the locker rooms. Bobby dripped some melted ice on Ruth’s neck, making her scream.

“Oh, so someone gets out of Danger Room duty?” Dani teased, propping her elbow on Xi’an’s head. “Useless against robots, are we?”

Xi’an pushed her off, swiping at her as she stood up. “If you’re volunteering for possession duty, I’ll be happy to help. Come on, let’s go get breakfast.”

“Not without my arch-nemesis.” Dani smiled down at Ruth. “Did you beat her again?”

“Please.” Ruth was Dani’s arch-nemesis because her powers were completely ineffectual against Ruth. They hadn’t yet managed to figure out if it was because she couldn’t process the visual hallucinations, her psychic powers prevented her brain from creating the hallucinations, or if Ruth had simply never been afraid of anything in her whole life. Probably all three. “Jamie’s burning the pancakes.”

Dani and Xi’an hit the ground running, shouting at a retreating Jamie.

Thanks to Ruth’s timely intervention, the pancakes were saved. She clambered into an open seat next to Amara, who was sitting next to Tabby and appeared to be deep in a discussion about whether or not it was illegal to flip Captain America off. She was asserting her independence from Scott, but was also still far away from Jean Paul, who liked to put food on her plate as a surprise for when she accidentally ate it. Amara smiled at Ruth when she sat down, while Tabby just rolled her eyes and passed her the syrup when Ruth made little grabby hands.

“Good morning, Ruthie. Anything in store for us today?”

Ruth didn’t know why people kept asking that. A lot of things happened all the time, Ruth just did her best to tell when it was important. One time she has seen a little of that TV show with the bald guy and all the money that she had accidentally caught Sam and Roberto watching and she saw a really big picture and feeling that the bald guy died at the end. Sam and Roberto got mad at her. Sometimes those really big feelings were about bad things and not TV shows, but it was TV shows a lot. Scott said that her priorities would change as she got older. Ruth thought her priorities right now were pretty good.

“Today Jean Paul says something mean and Rahne watches E.T.,” Ruth dutifully recited. Ruth was going to like E.T. when she saw it with Rahne. “And Jean gets mad at Jean Paul and Jean Paul says…” Ruth trailed off. That wasn’t right.

Scott, a little way down the table talking with Hank, grew still.

Amara and Tabby were looking confused, so Ruth tried again. “Arcade sneaks into the house and does some weird stuff.” No, that wasn’t good either. “Josh cures cancer.” Who was Josh? Ruth didn’t even know who Josh was. “Layla thinks she’s so great but she’s not.” What?

Scott was standing behind Ruth. She had been paying attention too, so he must have moved really fast. He took her hand and carefully helped her away from the table, but he was holding it a little tight.

“Can you excuse us please?”

Ruth hadn’t finished her pancake, so she put it in her other hand and let Scott lead her away from the table. They stepped into the living-living room. Oh, there was her Polly Pocket.

It was pretty hard to put on Polly Pocket’s dress with one hand and eat a pancake with the other, so Ruth stuffed the whole pancake in her mouth and settled on the Polly Pocket instead. Scott was looking at her very seriously, and put her on the couch so he could squat in front of her. Ruth wiggled around.

“Can you tell me what you told Tabby and Amara again?”

Ruth mumbled around her pancake.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

She swallowed the pancake, then enunciated sarcastically, “I don’t remember.”

“It was two minutes ago, you have to remember.”

“Nuh-uh.” Ruth was getting bored of this. She went back to the toy.

It was pretty hard to read Scott’s facial expression at the best of times, but he did seem a little serious. Too bad. “Ruth, this is important. Did you say Jean’s name?”

“Jean Paul was being mean.” He didn’t even need her to know that.

“No, another Jean.” Scott pursed his lips. Ruth copied him. It felt weird. “You said someone got mad at Jean Paul for being mean. Who was that?”

“Don’ remember.” This dress was really hard to get on.

“Ruth!”

Kitty rolled her eyes a lot and Ruth was really jealous she couldn’t do it. She rolled her eyes mentally anyway, pretending that Scott could see it. “Jean was buying me a Polly Pocket.” She wiggled the one she was holding in front of him. “This one.”

It was her favorite one, too. Jean had helped her pick it out from Toys R Us.

Scott stopped squatting and fell down on his butt. He was so weird. “Erik bought you that toy.”

“Yeah, please.”

“Then why did you say Jean bought you it?”

“You’re being weird today, sorry.”

“Ruth!”

Ruth didn’t know why he was yelling at her. He was being mean and not making any sense again. “I don’t know!” Ruth yelled, putting her toy down. She didn’t want to say that she felt like things weren’t making any sense either. “Stop yelling at me! Leave me alone!”

She ran back to the table, shoved a pancake into her purple shorts, grabbed another one, and ran all the way back up the very big stairs back into her room.

Sulking was a pretty good way to get Scott back in her room in the next ten minutes to either apologize or make Jean Paul apologize, but when he didn’t show up Ruth decided it was unproductive and decided on sulking and reading at the same time. She listened to Harry Potter for a little while, then got bored with it and accidentally realized that Snape killed Dumbledore.

“I can’t stop doing this,” she said miserably. Lockheed’s little glass eyes looked sympathetic. “I’m so unlucky.”

After an hour or two Ruth slunk back down the stairs to see if anyone was playing Final Fantasy yet. But the living room was abandoned, the house turned inside out so kids could go to school or work. Ruth didn’t go to school or work. Sometimes she thought vaguely that she was supposed to go to school, but Scott had probably just forgotten and she didn’t want to remind him by asking about it. This time of day was really boring and Ruth spent a lot of it learning from workbooks and learning tapes, or bugging one of the adults, or playing by herself. She was pretty great at that. She liked to explore the very high abandoned hallways and the dusty rooms, where she had found a cardboard box full of old World War 2 stuff - or had Scott done that?

But when Ruth went back downstairs to the Weirdly-Big Foyer she saw Bobby pacing and talking to someone on his phone. Bobby saw her almost immediately, and smiled really big. “It’s okay,” he said into the phone, “I’ve got an idea. Ruth!”

Ruth was wary, but waved hi.

“Ruth, do you want to go to the Baxter Building?”

“Doesn’t the Fantastic Four live there?” That was what Logan had said anyway, but he hadn’t looked too impressed.

“Yeah, the Fantastic Four. You know, and my boyfriend. You want to come with me, right?”

“I don’t care about your boyfriend, sorry.”

Bobby muttered into the phone, before covering the speaker and looking pleadingly at Ruth. “Please? Tell you what, I can tell Scott that you’re there for a playdate with Franklin. He wants you to, like, socialize with your peers or whatever? Then I can go see Johnny! Ruthie come on, my love life depends on you.”

“You told me not to tell you if you break up,” Ruth said dubiously. “That’s what you said.”

“And I still don’t want you to tell me that.” Bobby looked panicked again. “Trust me, you’ll like Franklin. Remember, he’s Johnny’s nephew? About your age? We love to socialize with other children? Throw me a bone, here.”

Who’s Franklin?

The name sounded vaguely familiar. But Ruth would have remembered if the Fantastic Four had a kid with them. They didn’t, they definitely didn’t - did they? There was no Franklin - right?

Bobby was arguing with Scott now, who had just walked in and still looked unimpressed. Ruth climbed down the stairs and glared at Scott, which was pretty useless because she still didn’t have eyes. She tended to glare with her eyebrows, which was pretty much the same thing. Ruth had been reliably told that she barely had facial expressions, but Scott always knew what she was feeling. It was like a Scott-sense. “Look,” Bobby said, “Ruth really, really wants to go see Franklin, right? I just have to take her.”

Scott looked down at Ruth, arms crossed. “Do we now.”

Today was Anti-Scott day. Anyone against Scott was Ruth’s ally. Ruth nodded firmly. “I love Franklin.” She still didn’t know who Franklin was.

“Last time you met Franklin you said that he smelled bad.”

Bobby was waiting expectantly. Scott didn’t seem to notice that he was being really weird today. Actually, it wasn’t Scott that was being weird - it was the day!

There were a lot of things in life that Ruth was confused about, or didn’t know. Logan said it was because she was a midget. Dani, her nemesis, said not to worry about it because she was a very bright girl. Jean Paul, her actual real nemesis, said it was because she was a little kid. It was possible that she had just never noticed about Franklin. Maybe the Fantastic Four really did have a kid all along - but then wouldn’t they be the Fantastic Five? This wasn’t like when she was learning about where water came from. She rattled off the list in her head - there was Dr. Richards, who was really full of himself,  Dr. Storm, who was really scary, Ben Grimm, who was a friend of Kitty’s and was probably okay, and Johnny, who was a real jock and who was stupid enough to date Bobby. She knew all of that.

Still, she had a lie to keep up. “Franklin and I have resolved our differences, please.” This was on Scott’s chart of ‘Conflict Resolution’, which Ruth had memorized just in case. “We resolved to understand each other better and to work as a team, and we apologized. Franklin and I are friends now please.”

“Fine.” Scott rubbed his temples. “Just fine. Have fun, you two.”

Bobby high fived Ruth the minute Scott left the room.

They took the little red car and Ruth buckled herself in, then got mad at Bobby when he didn’t buckle himself in.

“Oh yeah?” Bobby said, laughing. “Does the future say the cops find us?”

Ruth realized that she didn’t already know. Normally she just knew, like she knew what she had for breakfast yesterday or the theme song of her favorite show. So she asked the future. The future didn’t say anything back.

She bit her tongue to stop from screaming.

“Bobby,” she said, “the future isn’t saying anything.”

Bobby shrugged, backing out of the driveway. “Sometimes it does that, I guess?”

“Bobby,” she said insistently, “the future isn’t saying _anything_.”

“Well, the future still exists, doesn’t it?” Bobby said impatiently. “Maybe it’s just quiet today.”

Bobby really did not understand how this worked.

The ride to the Baxter Building was long. Ruth thought about Jean and Jean Paul and poor Dumbledore and whoever Josh was. She was glad that whole cancer thing was getting fixed, though - was it? She tried checking again but she still couldn’t tell.

By the time they had to pass through a lot of security checkpoints in the big white lobby with a lot of people in suits, Ruth had decided that Dr. Richards would know. Bobby flashed his X-Men ID card at the receptionist lady so she would unlock the elevator for them and simultaneously explain why she didn’t have eyes. The elevator was extremely big, and went on for an extremely long time, and Ruth would have been more impressed by it if she hadn’t seen herself coming here a few months ago - did she?

“Nothing’s making sense today,” Ruth said morosely as Johnny Storm met her and Bobby by the elevator. They were on the top floor, let right into where the Fantastic Four lived. Ruth peeked out into the penthouse apartment as Johnny and Bobby were being gross. It was really white and stylish, but in a comfy way. Some of the furniture was old and there were a lot of pictures, as well as lot of ugly rugs. Ruth liked it. There was a really big TV and a lot of electronics and gizmos everywhere, which probably looked like fun. There was a little egg shaped robot sitting in a corner, probably turned off but still looking really cool. Ruth decided that it was too bad that the Fantastic Four were The Other because they looked like fun.

But she had a mission, and that mission had just come out of a very large, very metal door that hissed when it opened. Dr. Richards rubbed at his eyes a little, still dressed in a frumpy sweatshirt and sweatpants. He chatted with Johnny and Bobby, who seemed a little panicked but was trying really hard to pretend he wasn’t.

Ruth tugged on Dr. Richard’s sleeve.

Bobby looked horrified. “Ruth! Oh man, Dr. Richards, I’m so sorry, Johnny said she could come over for a playdate with Franklin.”

“It’s alright.” Dr. Richards smiled at her before extending a professional hand. “It’s nice to see you again, Ruth. Franklin’s been talking about you a lot, he’s very excited.”

That was funny, considering the fact that _Franklin didn’t exist_.

“Hello please sorry,” Ruth said politely. “You’re supposed to be kind of smart, right please?”

Dr. Richards turned back to Bobby, who shrugged. “She has a speech impediment.”

“Weird one.” Dr. Richards looked back at Ruth. “Yes, some people say so.”

“Not as smart as Scott, though,” Ruth clarified. Dr. Richards smiled.

“No, I suspect not. Is there something I can help you with?”

Ruth looked pointedly at Bobby and Johnny, then pointed towards the door they just came through. “In private.”

“You can’t just kick me out of my own house, man,” Johnny said.

“In private.” Ruth tilted her head down so Johnny got the full brunt of her eyeless gaze.

Johnny shuddered, then quickly left her and Dr. Richards alone.

Now that the preliminary business was over with, Ruth propped her hands on her hips and stared seriously at a very confused Dr. Richards. Honesty was probably the best policy here. “The future is dead and your son doesn’t exist.”

Dr. Richards stared at her for a long second. Ruth stared back. They locked intense gazes.

Finally, Dr. Richards said, “Let me check my instruments.”

He left to go check his instruments. Ruth refused to second guess herself, tapping her foot pointedly until she heard footsteps again and Dr. Richards opened the door. He didn’t look like he had seen the death of tomorrow on any of his instruments, so her plan was probably a bust.

He shook his head at her. “The future seems relatively intact. Also, I’m pretty sure my son is real.”

“You don’t understand!” Ruth waved her arms. “The future is really quiet, okay yes please, and I have to _ask_ and it isn’t saying anything! Jean and Erik both gave me toys! Why did Snape even kill Dumbledore!”

“I understand that Snape had to gain possession of the Elder Wand through defeating its old master and to solidify his standing as a double agent with Voldemort,” Dr. Richards said seriously.

“The future!” Ruth yelled. She couldn’t really verbalize more than that. She could barely explain the future at all to people who didn’t understand. Everyone kept on asking her about time, time, time. Ruth barely even knew what time was. It wasn’t _her_ problem. But she was feeling it now, feeling it like Bobby’s ice cubes crawling down her neck. It was like how everyone wouldn’t stop trying to explain colors to her. Ruth didn’t care. She had bigger problems. Adults were always so focused on the stupid stuff, like daytime television and bills, or the Apocalypse and civil rights.

Dr. Richards, ever an adult, looked conflicted. “Look, kiddo, if this is about a…” he waved a limp arm. Literally limp, it was like a piece of spaghetti. “A mutant thing then I really can’t help you. Not that mutants aren’t scientific,” he added hastily, “but that I’m not the, ah, expert. Believe it or not, I’m not the expert in everything. Just most things. But those things do not include hieromancy, logoritmancy - trust me, I’ve tried - molybdomancy, scarpomancy, or any other kind of mancy. I try and stay out of all that stuff.”

“Flatscan,” Ruth sneered.

Then she flounced off to Franklin’s room. It felt like walking into the dungeon of a final boss in Zelda. His door was barely down the hall, next to a singed looking one that had to be Johnny’s and a very crumpled one that had to be Ben Grimm’s. It had little signs posted on it, like ‘Franklin’s Room!’ and ‘Antivaccers STAY OUT’.

She knocked on the door, because Scott taught her manners, then walked in anyway, because she was mad at Scott today. She could almost hear the door locking behind her.

Franklin was playing with a Kid’s First Chemistry set, little stand of test tubes with neon liquids in them carefully laid out with two or three beakers sitting next to them. He was sitting on the floor next to a big toy chest, where dinosaurs roared on top of it and a rich ecosystem of Tinkertoys surrounded them. Some of the Tinkertoys made buildings that looked a little familiar.

“Heya Ruth,” Franklin said, not looking up from his Chemistry set, “still think I’m smelly?”

“Yes!” Ruth shouted. She took a deep breath and told herself to stop shouting. “Yes,” she said again, in a reasonable tone of voice. “Your dad keeps on saying that you exist, make him stop.”

“That’d be hard.”

“Franklin!”

Franklin sighed, finally looking up from his set. Ruth realized that she did recognize him.

Actually, she thought, looking around, she recognized all of this. There was the old dollhouse that they used to play with. She had thrown the GI Joe in the kitchen at his head once. And there was the TV with all the video games Franklin would play and narrate to her. There was the old bed with the Spider-man covers, and the blue bean bag that she used to jump on, and his figurines and broken old inventions that were on the top of his thick oak bookshelf and all the big books inside. He had a big, thin rug and a lot of burn marks in weird places in the wall, and a lot of little paintings that he had made. It was multicolored, rich, and fun. Somebody had been living there for a very long time.

“Are we still fighting?” Franklin said, scowling. “I’m sick of fighting. Let’s just be friends again.”

It was like the Twilight Zone. Ruth hoped that there wouldn’t be a nuclear apocalypse anytime soon, but she supposed that she didn’t have glasses to lose. “You still don’t exist,” Ruth said stiffly. “And the future still isn’t working so _there_.”

“You’re so bossy.” Franklin poured one test tube into another. Curious despite herself, Ruth moved forward closer and sat down on the thin little rug next across from him. The test tubes were a cheery pink, blue, and violet. Probably. “Look at what I’m making.”

“What are you making?” Ruth asked, still curious. She didn’t know a lot about science, considering that she barely had any school. “You can’t make anything with just that liquid stuff.”

“Sure I can. They’re chemicals, see? Watch.” Franklin swished around one of the test tubes and poured it into the other one, then let it sit. “Give it thirty seconds.” He looked at his watch and counted out very loudly, “One, two, three, four..”

Ruth reluctantly joined in, “Five, six, seven, eight..”

They stared intently at the test tube - well, Franklin stared, Ruth looked in the general direction - until at about their count of twenty five, where something started swirling at the bottom. At thirty it was there: a small dark lump. Ruth was unimpressed, but Franklin patiently poured out the chemicals over something that looked like coffee paper into a cup. Whatever they had made together was on the coffee paper, and as Ruth focused more closely she could tell that it was a little crystal.

“No way,” Ruth breathed, “you can’t make crystals!”

Franklin looked smug. “You can too. I can make anything. Look, it’s just basic chemistry. This thing plus that thing equals this different thing.”

“That’s not true,” Ruth said again, but she was beginning to doubt herself. “It was liquids, it can’t just make something solid like that.”

“Sure you can. It’s like Dad always says, things are more than their whole.” Franklin pointed at the Tinkertoys, arranged into a strange and artistic building. “See? Those stick toys made Doom Castle, but they’re just sticks too. Doom Castle doesn’t exist, it’s just the sticks. But Doom Castle is real too - right?”

“I’m really confused,” Ruth said blandly.

“Here, look at the crystal.” He pointed to the small crystal he was still holding, its little jagged boxes and spikes. “It’s made out of the liquid chemicals, right?”

Was this a trick question? “Yes?”

“But it’s not a liquid,” Franklin said triumphantly. “It’s a solid. It’s different. But it can’t be anything other than what it’s made out of. But it’s different too. See?”

Ruth got it. “Oh,” she said, “it’s like the future.”

Franklin laughed, delighted that somebody had understood him. “Yeah, you got it!” He smiled. “This is why we’re friends, Ruth, you’re so smart.”

His parents were Dr. Richards and Dr. Storm but she was smart? Ruth ducked her head so he couldn’t see her smiling. “But wait.” She poked at the chemistry some more, turning the beaker where the leftover chemicals had gone. “What happens to Doom Castle once you have to put your toys away?”

Franklin’s smile froze. Ruth began to feel bad. She didn’t mean to make him feel stupid or anything, or think she was stupid for saying anything dumb. Their nonexistent/existent friendship was important to her. “Franklin?”

The other boy slowly began to pour the other test tubes in the leftover beaker, letting them all swirl together into one big mess. He put a little triangle beaker and a couple excited looking books away back into a cardboard box. He was chewing at his lip. The polite thing was probably to help him put his stuff away, but Ruth didn’t want him to put it away. She wanted to make more of the crystals.

“That’s the freaking problem,” Franklin said, chewing his lip. He looked like he was about to cry. “I keep on making things but I always have to put all the toys back. Mom never lets me just keep them out.”

“Scott makes me do that too,” Ruth said reasonably. He never appreciated her lego sculptures, always saying that they hurt his feet. “It’s because it’s messy.”

“That’s what people keep _telling_ me.” Franklin jammed the lid back on the box, messing it up a couple of times and creasing the corners. “Put all your things away. Don’t put that there. Don’t make weird things. Stop bothering everyone else with the things you’re making.” He looked back at her, eyes blazing. They were either blazing with tears or something else. “I’m not bothering you, am I?”

“You were,” Ruth said, “because you didn’t exist and it was stupid. But you’re existing here and your room’s pretty cool, so it’s okay I guess.”

“You’re sure?” Franklin looked her her reproachfully. “Even when I make atoms and blow up your dreams?”

The dream she had last night, the one that made her think she had woken up at three am maybe. She remembered it now, why the name Franklin had sounded so familiar - he was playing with atoms with her. Or maybe she had been playing with atoms with him. The details were a little fuzzy until everything exploded.

“That was you?” What a jerk. “Stop blowing up my dreams, it’s rude.”

“I’m sorry.” His little face fell. A dinosaur fell off the toy chest, just by its own. “I’m just trying to play with my toys.”

Well, the room was pretty nice. Ruth looked around it again. Some of the stacked Gamecube games were falling over, and a ceiling mobile of the solar system was beginning to spin around and around. It didn’t look quite right. “Your toys are pretty cool,” she said, still wondering why he was going on about his toys. She wanted to talk about chemicals again. “Look, those chemicals and little crystals are cool. Make whatever you want. Just make sure to make them with me, okay? And it’s my turn next time.”

“Really?” The room slowed down. Must just have been the wind.

“Really,” Ruth said firmly. “Here, I’ll prove it to you. I can see the future.”

Franklin rolled his eyes. “Duh.”

“Then I can just tell you where Doom Castle goes. That’s why you were feeling bad, right?” Problem solved. Ruth felt smug. “If you can make anything, I can see anything. Fair’s fair.”

“I don’t even know how you can see at all,” Franklin sulked. He leaned backwards, not bothering to put the chemistry set away, and rummaged through the small pile of toys on top of his toy chest. He withdrew a plastic magnifying glass. “You’re supposed to not even have eyes. You need those! My Eyewitness book said so.”

“Your Eyewitness book is wrong,” Ruth said smugly. “It’s because it’s called Eyewitness, get it? I’m everything-witness.”

Franklin looked through the magnifying glass. “Explain.”

Ruth had actually never explained this once in her entire life, but she thought Franklin deserved to know. Besides, he was such a know it all Ruth liked being able to explain something to him for a change. This was why he was so smelly. Not on the outside, but on the inside. “We have five senses, right?”

“Sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch,” Franklin rattled off obediently.

“No, there’s other ones too.” Ruth began counting off on her hands. “Scent of flowers, sense of pride, sense of fair play, census man, or sense of confusion. Like that.”

Franklin nodded seriously. “I get that.”

“I have all those too,” Ruth said, “Every sense there is.” She snorted. “That lady at the mall said she had a sixth sense, which I thought was pretty sad, because you need more than that to see the future. It’s hard, you know.”

“That’s so cool,” Franklin breathed. Ruth puffed up even more. “So what do you sense in the future?”

Ruth looked.

There was nothing there. Nothing after nothing kept pouring out.

There wasn’t supposed to be nothing in the future. She had been happier just not being able to see it, like how the computer was still working even if the monitor was broken. But this was like turning on the monitor and seeing static. The static was in Ruth’s brain and it hurt so bad. Ruth started crying, trying not to cry too loud because it was embarrassing but ending up crying a lot. Her head really, really hurt, and she wished Scott was there. She wouldn’t even be mad at Scott any more if he would just come and give her some of those little tablets and hot chocolate.

The future wouldn’t stop not being there, even if Scott came, and if Scott wasn’t here then he would never be here because there was no future and there was nothing outside of this room, ever, nothing except for what was exactly going on right now. Ruth’s head hurt a lot. Franklin was hovering next to her, looking almost as upset as she was, before giving up and giving her a really tight hug. It made her feel a lot better.

“Franklin,” Ruth sobbed, “fix the future, please. It’s not there.”

“I know.” He had known all along, Ruth knew, he just didn’t like it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just wanted you to be here!”

“I am here!” Ruth pushed him aside, scrubbing her nose with the palm of her hand. She sniffed again. “It’s everything else that’s not here! I want to see Scott and Bobby again!”

“I know!” The room was startling to rattle again. “I can get them in here, if you want. Do you want Scott here, I can just go get him-”

“It’s not Scott!” Ruth shouted. She hadn’t realized it until she said it. “I want my Scott, real Scott, and my real past without any Jean or Josh or anyone and my real future!”

“What,” Franklin shouted back, “and I’m not real? I thought we were friends!”

“We are! Aren’t! I don’t know!” Ruth started crying again.

The dinosaurs rattled off the chest, and the beaker of leftover chemicals jumped around, and the solar system mobile seemed a little bit weird all of a sudden. All of Ruth’s million and one senses were spinning around and making her nauseous. “Please,” Franklin whispered, the din growing louder. “I’m sorry for making the atoms, I won’t do it again. I won’t make any more atoms and things will stop blowing up, okay? Please just stop crying.”

Wherever the new atom that Franklin had made went, it had clearly made something go weird. Maybe that new atom was what made the future and the past and everything really funky. But Franklin couldn’t just take the atom back or unmake the atom. Atoms didn’t work that way, the man in the Science Museum had said so. You can’t make or unmake an atom and the three states of matter were solid, liquid, and gas. There was way too much science today.

It had been nice, though. The memories of her and Franklin being in this room playing lots of video games and eating the snack food that Johnny had snuck them were nice. Ruth had never really had a friend her own age before. All the other girls before Scott showed up were mean and thought she was weird, and afterwards she had a lot of really nice family but they were all really old. Ruth didn’t even go to school, and all she did was play by herself. Maybe all  Franklin did was play by himself, too.

That was stupid. Two people who like each other should play with each other, not with themselves. That was why Johnny and Bobby made stupid faces at each other and Tabby and Amara made fun of other people together and Rachel and Cable called each other stupid head a lot. People weren’t supposed to be by themselves all the time. Maybe that was Franklin’s deal.

“Okay,” Ruth said, making herself stop crying. “I’m an X-Man. X-Men can do anything.”

“True,” Franklin said, scrubbing at his eyes too. “Are you done crying?”

“Shut up. And you’re a Fantastic Four and are really smart and have cool chemistry sets.”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s fix the future,” Ruth said firmly, “and be best friends forever.”

It was the right thing to do. The room felt a little happier. Franklin looked happier too. “Do you really mean it? You can see the future, you really know what forever looks like.”

“I know all about forever,” Ruth said, “and I’ve never told any of it to anybody. I’m telling you right now. Forever. You and me. And your cool house.”

The list of things Ruth knew but refused to tell fell under included the categories of ‘how blind was she’ and ‘age at which she stopped wetting the bed’. It also included forever. Nobody had ever known, she had never said so. The truth of it was -

“Okay!”

He and Ruth high fived, then hesitated, then tried out fist bumping.

“We need a cool handshake,” Ruth said. “Like a secret one.”

“Oh, yeah.” Franklin concentrated really hard. “How about you use one of your extra senses to say hi and I use one of my extra senses to say hi back? That’s really secret.”

“Alright,” Ruth said amicably, “but with our hands we can do a high five too.”

They said hi with their secret senses, then did a high five.

“Okay,” Ruth said. “Now that we have all that done. There’s an initiation ritual but we can get that done later. We have to fix the future now.” Franklin opened his mouth. “I know you can do it, Franklin!”

“Can’t we keep playing dinosaurs?” Franklin looked rebellious. “I could make a couple new dimensions for us to mess around in. I can make one where everybody’s an animal. Or one where everybody has to fight each other all the time.”

“We’ve already done that today.” She didn’t know it was true until she said it. “Let’s fix the future and go watch TV.”

“Well,” Franklin said, “there’s a Star Trek marathon on right now.”

“Right.”

“And we are best friends forever, right?” The room started melting. Everything in it was melting and dripping and soaking into the floor, the Spider-Man bed sheets running into each other and pooling onto the ground and the thin rug staining the floor. “Right?”

“That’s what I just said,” Ruth said impatiently, “so go ahead and do it. Put Doom Castle back in the toy chest. But just remember - _don’t forget me!_ ”

The room got very, very, very small, and then exploded.

  


Ruth woke up.

She slung herself down the stairs, sprinting down the hallway and almost colliding with a very pissed-off Emma. Her bare feet slapped against the kitchen tile as she pushed past Erik at the coffee machine and a Jamie scraping a crepe onto a plate at the stove. She almost paused at the sight of Josh, polishing an apple on his golden skin and looking dubious even as Scott glanced at her from the iPad he was reading, but she ignored him.

Ruth took off before he could say anything, dodging Layla’s homework spread on the living-living room floor and ignoring Gaven sleeping on the scratchy nice-living room couch. She threw open the doors and jumped onto the curling bannister on the unnecessarily-large-foyer’s steps, landing in front of the giant front doors to open them the second before the doorbell rang.

Franklin stood there, blue ‘4’ T-shirt and white shorts, unruly blond hair and a sheepish expression. “Hi.”

“Hi yourself.” Ruth leaned against the doorframe, realizing way too late that she was wearing her embarrassing pyjamas and no shoes. “Had a dream about you last night.”

He rolled his eyes. “We’ve been hanging out in your dreams fighting robots for an exceptionally long time, yes.”

“Did you really remake the entire universe just to hang out with me?”

Franklin’s jaw dropped open. “You _remember_ that?”

“Oh, like I just forget something like that?” She slapped him on the arm, scowling. “I can’t believe you, you dick. I’m losing count of how many times you destroyed the universe because of some selfish-” she smacked him on the arm again, “stupid,” and again, “retroactive time travel dimensional bullshit that makes even my head hurt!”

“Ow, stop hitting me!”

“I’ll stop hitting you when you stop being a moron!”

“Hey, at least I never disappoint.” He smiled at her, tricking her into not hitting him anymore. “Best friends forever, right?”

“I can’t believe you retroactively made yourself exist.”

“That’s kind of not what happened at all.”

“You nearly got me stuck in a pocket dimension!”

“God, you’re making me sound like some kind of supervillain.”

She hit him again.

“Ow!”

A voice called from behind them, Scott poking his head into the foyer. “Ruth, are you going to let Franklin in or what? What’s that about a pocket dimension?”

“Nothing!” They called simultaneously, then scowled at each other. Scott shrugged and went back inside.

“Whatever,” Ruth said, stepping aside into the foyer and letting Franklin pass through. “Thanks a lot. What is this, the seventh time you’ve pulled crap like this?”

“Hope will thank me when she’s older.”

“God, what _ever_.” She grabbed his hand, tugging him towards the kitchen. “Come on, let’s see if my siblings try and eat you again.”

“So long as Layla stays ten feet away from me at all times.”

Ruth smiled, leading him forward with one hand as she subtly stuck the other hand into her pyjama pocket. She felt around for what she knew would be in there, was in there, was never actually in there because of Franklin’s stupid time meddling: one Tinkertoy, a little hinge of circles and sticks, a worn cornerstone of time knocked off the ruins of Doom’s Castle.

She clenched her hand, letting it crumble into dust, and ran back into the kitchen with Franklin.


End file.
